The blog's title is a combination of NCBI, the acronymn for the National Center for Biotechnology Information, and ROFL, Internet slang for "rolling on the floor laughing." It's a fairly accurate description of the blog's purpose: to unearth the most bizarre, dubious, and unintentionally hilarious experiments published in life science journals around the world.

Here are some recent NCBI ROFL headlines, all referring to actual research conducted by scientists:

Meredith Carpenter and Lil Fritz-Laylin, both Ph.d candidates in Cal's molecular and cell biology department, started the blog at the beginning of the year and now receive an average of 40,000 hits a month.

"Grad school can be pretty rough sometimes, so it's nice to have an outlet that lets us have fun with science amidst the seriousness," said Carpenter.